### Gifts, or products There’s a family-run café in Rathmines called Ernesto’s where I sometimes go, for it's Cuban music, vibrant and soothing ambience, it's leftist values and ethos, and most importantly for my gradually deepening rapport with [Jonathan](https://www.socialfabric.ie/post/episode-77-jonathan-smith-ernesto-coffee-owner), the owner. He runs Ernesto's with a different set of values from many other similar establishments that strive to be the best or the most efficient: it's a more grounded and more human rhythm. Once, as he asked me how I’d been lately, I looked at the woman next in line behind me, wondering if our conversation was holding her up. Jonathan turned to her, smiled, and said, “Would you mind if I just check in on his life for a minute?” That moment has stayed with me longer than the coffee did. Because what he was offering wasn’t just good coffee; it was connection. It’s funny how many narratives I have internalized about doing business, about how it _has_ to be a certain way. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately, especially as I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s _Braiding Sweetgrass_, and her essay “The Gift of Strawberries.” She writes about the generosity of the land, how strawberries appear unearned, unbilled, beyond the logic of transaction. “There is no mathematics of worthiness,” she says. “And yet here they are.” That’s what I want my work to feel like. Like strawberries in June, like a business that breathes abundance rather than extracts value. Here's a line I love from that book: > *As the scholar and writer Lewis Hyde notes, "It is the cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people."* I don’t want to build a company that optimizes for conversion rates and user retention graphs. I want to build something that feels like giving, where the exchange itself nourishes both sides. A business that lives in that same space as Jonathan’s café: personal, slow, relational. I want my work to make people feel the way I feel when Jonathan pauses the world for a minute to ask about my life: seen instead of transacted-with. ### The gift isn’t naive The gift economy isn’t just an idealistic notion. It’s alive today in the corners of the internet where people still make things for love. There are creators like Grant Sanderson of _3Blue1Brown_, whose math videos are both art and insight, offered freely on YouTube. Or Ben Eater, building computer hardware from scratch while explaining every circuit. Or Andy Matuschak, sharing research on tools for thought. None of them charge for access; they give everything away. And yet, they’re supported by generous patrons on platforms like Patreon, out of sheer gratitude. People give because they’ve been touched, because they want to join the cycle of generosity. It reminds me of how my dad used to run small personality development and English classes back when we lived in Dubai. He could have charged a fair amount since it was good, practical training that helped people find better jobs and confidence, but he didn’t. He treated it almost like service, guided more by enthusiasm than economics. Years later, those students, now scattered across careers and countries, still find ways to give back. Some send gifts, others offer business opportunities or help someone from our family with work. That web of goodwill has become a kind of safety net around him that is not only financial, but also emotional. It’s a form of wealth that banks can’t quantify and is built on trust, care, and reciprocity. Maybe that’s what abundance looks like. Instead of a number in an account, a circle of giving that keeps returning, sometimes years later, in unexpected ways. ### Building from that feeling That’s where I'd love _Explorable Codeworks_ to go: a business that doesn’t end when the payment goes through. A business that feels alive in the bonds it builds. Where learning is shared like a gift, freely, joyfully, without the anxious calculation of what’s “worth it.” I don’t know exactly how it will look yet. Maybe it’s patron-supported courses. Maybe it’s a pay-what-you-can model. Maybe it’s just small, genuine acts of care repeated over time. But I do know the feeling I’m chasing, that quiet joy of giving something beautiful and watching it ripple outward. Like the strawberries. Like a conversation at Ernesto’s that lasts longer than it should, but somehow, feels exactly right.